


Running Didn't Solve Anything

by random_chick



Category: Skins
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-13 23:19:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142811
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/random_chick/pseuds/random_chick
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some old "friends" give Cassie great comfort.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Running Didn't Solve Anything

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cosmia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmia/gifts).



Cassie dreams about the boys a lot. She dreams about all of her old friends, but two of them with frequency -- Chris and Tony. She doesn't think about the why of it very often, and maybe she should. God knows her mind isn't the most stable of places on a good day. And good days are few and far between for her.

Not that she's got a horrible life in New York. No, she's got a pretty decent one. She's got a job, a place to live, people she can call casual acquaintances. She doesn't really have anybody she can call a friend, but she doesn't feel alone.

This surprises her. She remembers how she used to be, the pills and the sex and the booze. This is still her, still how she is, just muted now by the years. (Not that there's been many of them; she's only 22.)

When she dreams, it's strange. Sometimes she's her twenty-two year-old self, other times she's the teenage self with all the problems. But no matter what, Chris and Tony are always the same. (Of course Chris will be the same, the dead don't change.)

She gets home after a long, hard shift at work and stumbles towards the bedroom, barely having time to change clothes before she hits the bed, not even bothering to crawl under the covers.

She dreams almost immediately, dreams of a messy room and Chris sitting on the floor, pills scattered across the floor like marbles.

"Want some?" he asks, not looking up as he methodically sorts the pills. "Got all your favorites."

"Not right now," she says, kneeling next to him. "Maybe later."

Chris shrugs, seemingly not bothered by her response. He's more interested in the pills in front of him, in organizing them, sorting them, getting them just the way he wants.

"That's a lot of pills," Cassie observes. "What are you going to do with them all?"

"The usual." Chris looks at her, grins. "My favorite pills for my favorite girl."

It's not the kind of thing he ever said before, and it's one of the things that tells Cassie she's dreaming. She ignores it, though, because in dreams you can do whatever you want.

"What if I don't want them?" she asks. "What if I want something else?"

"What do you want, Cassie?" Chris turns to her, looking more solemn than he ever did in life. "Have you figured yourself out yet? It's been years since you ran away from everyone, you know. What have you figured out?"

Dream Chris is sometimes more antagonistic than his real counterpart ever was. It's not the first time he's asked her this, and it's not the first time that she's replied, "Nothing. well... almost nothing."

It's a different answer than she's given before, though. Because along the way, she's picked up a few things. Like the knowledge that she doesn't _need_ the sex and booze and pills to survive. That she can be a person all on her own. If she wants those things, fine, but she does not need them to be herself.

Chris looks at her, eyebrows arched. "Oh? Share."

"I'm me," Cassie says. "I don't need things or people to be me."

"That's it?" Chris looks disappointed, but for once Cassie doesn't feel the urge to apologize or try to explain herself or make bullshit up just to sound like she knows what she's talking about. She's gotten some confidence in the past few years, confidence that translates into her dream self.

"That's all I need," she tells him. "Everything else is just an afterthought."

He looks sad at that, and she wonders if she said something wrong. But before she can hurry to try and redeem whatever it was she said wrong, Chris's attention is back on the pills in front of him. Cassie isn't sure what to make of that. She's not sure what to make of any of this. It's not as concrete as most of her usual dreams, and Tony's not even there like the usual dreams.

 _So what's going on, then?_ Cassie wonders but doesn't quite care about. It's just good to see Chris again. She always thought he was the kind of guy who shouldn't be dead so young. He'd been a good guy, troubled but still good. He hadn't deserved the fate he'd gotten. (And then she wonders when she started giving a fig about things like fate.)

And then, before she can talk to her dead friend anymore or even try making sense of it while still asleep, Cassie wakes with a start. The dream is gone before she can tell herself to remember it.

She sits up, frowning and trying to understand why she feels like she's lost something. But she can't figure out what and that makes her mad. Because she ran away to get away from confusion and loss and here she is facing it again? There's got to be some kind of reason.

And if it was that, she could deal with it. But she can't even _remember_ the reason, just that she feels this way because of a dream, and she doesn't know what to do so she does the only thing she can. She climbs out of bed, makes her way over to her dresser, and opens the top drawer to rummage around in it for a minute.

She comes up with a bottle of pills.

Not even looking to see what they are, not that the label's accurate anymore anyway, Cassie twists off the cap, dumps two pills into her hand, pops them in her mouth, and swallows them dry. She caps the bottle, tosses it back in the drawer, shuts the drawer, and heads off to the kitchen. It's too late to go out and solve the angst with sex, but she's got one of the three down and there's a bottle of the last one in the kitchen with her name on it.

Twenty minutes later, Cassie is halfway to drunk.


End file.
